The Face of the Ripper

[admin]

Yes, I know this has already appeared on Casebook, but it is featured in today's USAToday, and so here we are.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science...per-face_x.htm


EnlargeChannel 5 Broadcasting via APThis image, using state of the art profiling, creates what may be the face of 19th century serial killer "Jack the Ripper." British analysts using witness statements created the composite police drawing.


LONDON — British analysts have created a composite police drawing of Jack the Ripper, depicting the notorious Victorian serial killer with a mustache, a receding hairline and bushy eyebrows, the makers of a new television documentary said Monday.

Using the 118-year-old statements of 13 witnesses, a Metropolitan Police analyst created an image of what the prostitute-killer is believed to have looked like. The killer's image was to be unveiled Tuesday on the British television channel Five.

"It's a popular misconception that nobody ever saw the murderer, that he just vanished into the fog of London," said former Metropolitan Police commander John Grieve in a statement. "Well that's just not right. There were witnesses at the time who were highly thought of by the police."

Grieve examined the witnesses' statements and found enough similarity to think they could have been talking about the same man. The computer drawing of the murderer's face was created from the descriptions. The newest investigators believe the murderer was between 25 and 35 years old and between 5-foot-5-inches and 5-foot-7-inches tall.

Jack the Ripper remains infamous, in part because his identity was never unmasked. More than 200 people have been accused of the murders of at least five East London prostitutes in 1888. The suspects have ranged from Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll to Sir John Williams, the royal family's obstetrician, to painter William Richard Sickert.

Looks Hispanic to me; maybe it's the moustache. But it sure don't resemble D'Onston very much. What do you think?

And John Grieve - he is the same numbskull that was so smitten with Patricia Cornwell, so you know what his opinion here is worth.

Originally Posted by John Grieve

Using the 118-year-old statements of 13 witnesses, a Metropolitan Police analyst created an image of what the prostitute-killer is believed to have looked like.

13 witnesses?!?! Is he talking something he saw in a movie version, or where does this even come from?

Originally Posted by John Grieve

"It's a popular misconception that nobody ever saw the murderer, that he just vanished into the fog of London," said former Metropolitan Police commander John Grieve in a statement. "Well that's just not right. There were witnesses at the time who were highly thought of by the police."

Funny, as several police officials said straight out that nobody ever saw the killer, and the only one for which we know for a fact that they were still trying to use to identify suspects was Lawende (though whether he was Anderson's witness on the alleged Mad Polish Jew identification is unknown), and he had said straight out that he didn't get a good enough look at the person he saw to be able to identify him later.

And even if all of those alleged witnesses did see the killer, e-fit composites don't work with someone reading other people's ambiguous statements and trying to fake an image together. The whole point is that the supposed witness is supposed to look at the image and make suggestions on how to make it look like what they remember seeing.

Looks like Patricia Cornwell doesn't have a monopoly on oversensationalistic crap masquerading as science.

[Debbie D]

Originally Posted by Dan Norder

And even if all of those alleged witnesses did see the killer, e-fit composites don't work with someone reading other people's ambiguous statements and trying to fake an image together. The whole point is that the supposed witness is supposed to look at the image and make suggestions on how to make it look like what they remember seeing.

Seeing as how they're all dead now, they had to work with what they had which were a few old statements. I don't think they meant it to be an "exact science" in this particular situation.

[Debbie D]

Originally Posted by admin

Looks Hispanic to me; maybe it's the moustache. But it sure don't resemble D'Onston very much. What do you think?
.

He does look Hispanic but I think that would have been mentioned by the witnesses.

It kind of makes me think of Chapman with a trimmed moustache and slick hair.

[Chris G.]

Snap? Severin Klosowski alias George Chapman, born in Nargoniak, occupied Poland in 1865, failed to qualify as a doctor in his home country and became a London barber. He was found guilty of poisoning three women and hanged on April 7, 1903. Usually considered an also ran as a suspect, he was in the East End at the time of the Whitechapel murders.

Chris

[Robert Linford]

Chris, that sketch bears an unnerving resemblance to Kenneth Williams with a false moustache.

Robert

Originally Posted by Debbie D

Seeing as how they're all dead now, they had to work with what they had which were a few old statements. I don't think they meant it to be an "exact science" in this particular situation.

I realize they couldn't make an exact science out of it, but from the things they are quoted as saying it sounds like they are pretending that it is. I'd chalk it up to journalistic error, but it's clear that most of these reports are going staight from a press release of some sort, and the "experts" are being directly quoted as saying things that are just nonsense.

With apologies to Howard...

...and myself...

..and to the stars of The Brady Bunch...

ripper-faces.jpg

[Chris G.]

Originally Posted by Dan Norder

With apologies to Howard...

...and myself...

..and to the stars of The Brady Bunch...

Attachment 1742

Ha, ha, I love it, Dan! Thanks.

Of course you are correct that there is no "exact science" in what Scotland Yard has done to contribute to tonight's documentary. Although once again the public is hoodwinked into thinking there is some sort of expertise in coming up with that moustachioed visage that quite possibly looked nothing like the murderer of 1888.

Chris

[Debbie D]

Dan has presented some very convincing evidence in his picture comparisons... but there is one last possibility.

Bap_o_sketch.jpg